


The terrible curse of the Hyuuga family

by Bacner



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (fandom), Naruto (fandom) - Fandom
Genre: AU - crossover, Akatsuki (cameo), Gen, Rats, curse, elemental countries, transformations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-18 22:16:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7332850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bacner/pseuds/Bacner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post S8 in BtVS, pre-series in Naruto. Neji makes a wish, Halfrek grants it, Amy has to fix it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> None of the characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners.

Once upon a time there was a young lad, called Neji Hyuuga. He lived in the Hyuuga family compound with his mother and father, with his aunt and uncle and two cousins – Hinata and Hanabi, and all was all right in the world.

Until the night his cousin Hinata had almost been kidnapped, and his father – after heroically helping to rescue her – instead of being recognized for the great man that he is – got sent to his execution instead. So, naturally, Neji got very, very upset about that and he went to one of the more remote section of the Hyuuga clan lands (and there were a lot of them, actually), and began to weep very, very loudly as any child who had lost his father has a right to. 

And he wept, he heard somebody ask him:

“Child, who has done wrong to you?”

Neji looked with his eyes – they were rather red from weeping and he hadn’t yet his Byakugan in them fully developed either – and saw a funny-looking lady. And furthermore, because he wasn’t feeling like himself fully either, instead of thinking about it, he told the lady pretty promptly:

“My father! He’s dead! And nobody cares anything about him! I wish that a terrible curse would fall over all!”

The latter wasn’t technically true, but Neji wasn’t in the position (or age) to care about it. Neither did Halfrek the wish-granting demon (or oni, as the demons were known in the Elemental Countries) care about it either. Instead, she smiled from sheer pleasure of the liberty derived from her wish, and said the magic words:

“Wish granted!”

And then she vanished without a trace, leaving young Neji wondering just what he had set in motion. That very same night, though, when the entire Hyuuga clan, both the main branch and the cadet one, transformed into rats and remained them until the next sunrise – and then Neji knew.

_To be continued..._


	2. Chapter Two

Amy Madison was in a mess: the magic was gone. Well, not metaphorical magic, but the literal one: Buffy the senior Vampire Slayer had smashed a certain sort of a super-magical seed with her scythe, and the magic was gone from the world, more or less. Warren, in particular, was gone, and Amy was not happy. 

Unfortunately, without her magic she was also unable to do anything about it – successfully, that is. Doing something unsuccessfully, on the other hand, just wasn’t to Amy Madison’s liking: there had been just too many failures in her past to add yet another one in the present. But her final failure, well, that still rankled. A lot. 

And so, when the ghost of a rather Oriental-looking gentleman appeared in Amy’s apartment sinking through the ceiling, Amy was rather startled.

“Amy Madison?” the ghost asked with a noticeable accent, but his English was quite fluent. 

“Yeah,” Amy muttered crossly, deciding that there wasn’t any way that she could protect herself if the ghost decided to launch an attack, so any precautions were useless. “And who are you?”

“Hyuuga Hizashi is at your service,” the ghost said with a rather courtly bow, “though in reality it is I who has a favor to ask.”

“I’m listening,” Amy said quietly, deciding that she didn’t have anything to lose by listening to the ghost.

“It has all started – with my death, I suppose,” Hizashi said uncomfortably. “My son...he’s so young...he didn’t take it as well as I hoped. And a wish-granting oni took an advantage of it. She had cast a rather terrible curse upon my entire clan, transforming them all into rat hengeyokai, not unlike yourself.”

“How terrible,” Amy said flatly, not quite agreeing that her misadventure with rats caused her to develop a sort of empathy towards them, besides other qualities. “Still, it isn’t quite the end of the world. I’ve heard of the wish-granting vengeance demons, and their powers can be broken-“

“That particular oni, alas, is already dead. Alas, I say, because with her demise the curse upon my clan has not lifted, which makes me suspect that the powers higher than that oni may feel that my clan is... deserving of that curse.”

“And you?” Amy asked shrewdly, aware that it was Hizashi’s death that started the whole process. 

Hizashi didn’t reply, but rather he looked away – for the first time since their encounter. That told even Amy (who wasn’t the most observant young woman in the world) quite a bit. “So, what do you want me to do?” she asked, unwilling to press Hizashi just yet (not without her powers, at any rate). “I’m not the best witch at breaking curses, nor the most powerful one. I can give you the address of one Willow Rosenberg, who will help you with breaking of the curse-“

“No,” Hizashi shook his head. “I want your head. I feel that you’re the best hengeyokai in your neighborhood who will help my clan, perhaps precisely because you’re not the best nor the most powerful magician in your land.”

“Really?” Amy narrowed her eyes. “Fancy that! Very well, I’ll go to your country and see what I can do. You have a deal.”

“Splendid!” Hizashi clapped his hands in excitement. Immediately, a wormhole of some sort appeared beneath Amy’s feet and she dropped into it.

_To be continued..._


	3. Chapter Three

“Oof!” Amy found herself sitting on a hillside overlooking some sort of a very strange – flouring but strange – village. “I must be getting really desperate if I am agreeing to a ghost’s proposition without thinking about it: everybody knows that the undead are notoriously untrustworthy deal makers!”

And yet, Amy’s irritation wasn’t genuine. She was actually pleased to be experiencing a change in scenery for a change on one hand, and on the other... she felt different. More alive, perhaps, which meant... “This land’s magic is intact,” she whispered quietly. “Cool!”

Encouraged thus in such a way, Amy got up and began to walk to the village’s gate, after casting a linguistics spell on herself. The ease with which the spell was cast alone had quite made up the inconvenience of Amy’s arrival, especially in Amy’s own opinion. 

Consequently, Amy passed through the village’s gate in a good mood and without any deterrent from the gateway’s guards (Amy did look to be quite non-threatening and non-kuniochi like in their opinion to be declared – unofficially, of course – a harmless civilian). Still, after two or three circular self-guided tours of the village (which was named Konoha), Amy began to sense that she was being watched, so she decided against going around in a one more circle, and instead approached another gateway, one whose guards had a distant but distinct resemble to the ghost of Hyuuga Hizashi.

“Are these the lands of the Hyuuga clan?” she asked innocently the guarding pair. “Please, do tell!”

“That is none of your business!” glared one the guards, but even Amy could hear that his heart wasn’t in it, and he was working with his autopilot turned on. And her inner rat could also tell that this was Hizashi’s cursed clan as well. So...

Here, though, an important note must be made: rats aren’t just social, they are also hierarchical, and very obviously so. But unlike dogs or wolves, who establish their dominance by fighting, the rats establish it by glaring at each other in a contest of wills.

The Hyuuga clan, of course, were quite expert in glaring themselves (a side-effect of the Byakugan bloodline), but as people, not as rats in a domination game. Therefore, when Amy got in touch with her inner rat and began to glare at them, the pair of guards of folded very quickly, (especially for the normally arrogant Hyuuga clansmen) and led her inside.

“Now that is suspicious,” one of the ANBU, who had been discretely watching Amy when she had arrived, muttered to his partner

* * *

Inside, the Hyuuga main building was very, very impressive, even though it wasn’t a skyscraper. Amy, however, had never been particularly interesting in skyscrapers, and so she was duly im-pressed by the building’s massive size and solid construction.

There were also more Hyuugas inside of the building, some marked with the Caged Bird seal, others not. But all of them had an inner rat inside of it now, and that caused Amy’s own inner rat to bristle and feel particularly aggressive and ready for a fight.

And so she got one.

_To be continued..._


	4. Chapter Four

In the public, the Hyuugas were the very picture of self-restraint – cool, calm, quiet and self-controlling. In the private, in the safety of their clan compound, they often argued on various themes, from serious to frivolous, loudly and passionately, often about how was the better Hyuuga and who was more important in the family?

Still, during the clan gatherings, the Hyuuga clan was usually about to maintain decorum for the first five to ten minutes, before the clan’s elders would pick a fight between themselves and Hyuuga Hiashi, the clan’s leader. From then on, it would be every Hyuuga for themselves, as everybody eventually tried in vain to remember what the discussion was about this time.

And yet, this time the situation was different: on one hand, everyone had a good idea what the discussion was about this time, but on the other, nobody had any idea as to what to do about it and to keep it within the compound as well. The customary pair of Hyuuga guards, standing at the gates, were also aware of the discussion, but by a quirk of fate, they were forced to remain out of the discussion and to keep everybody else out of the Hyuuga compound (unless it was an actual emergency). As a consequence, to see one of those guards appear with a stranger in tow created quite a surprise.

“Who are you and why are you here?” Hiashi asked in a typical curt Hyuuga manner. That was a tactical mistake: Amy herself was feeling quite friendly and inclined to be helpful, if just because she knew personally that being transformed into a rat was no picnic, when it was against one’s will even more so. Her inner rat, however, was itching for a fight for dominance, and Hiashi’s unfortunate question set the rat off. It bristled its back – and back in the real life, Amy’s own hair stood up on its end, causing the Hyuugas to stare (not that they could help it due to the Byakugan’s appearance).

“I am here to help you with your new family curse,” Amy said briskly, as behind her human eyes a big dark Norway rat chattered its teeth towards her more decorate rival, “because your brother’s ghost has asked me to.”

“Now why-“ the elder who spoke stopped himself just in time, but Amy had caught it all the same.

“Because he’s his brother,” she nodded towards Hiashi, “and that is the sort of thing brothers do.”

There was a long, drawn out pause, as everybody generally waited for somebody else to speak. Finally, Hiashi (since Hizashi was his brother, after all), spoke: 

“He did? I mean, he implied-“

“Yes, he did,” Amy nodded, “and he also implied that he wasn’t happy about being a ghost. Have you, uh, tried to apologize to him regarding his unfortunate fate?”

“Of course we did! We honored him, really, in a small, private family ceremony…” Hiashi fell silent, as he remembered that while quite a few of the clan’s elders and other important people (who couldn’t stand Hizashi while he was alive and vice versa) were present back then, both his daughters and nephew were noticeably absent by Hiashi’s own decision. “But perhaps it was done incorrectly. What do you think, nephew?” he turned towards Neji.

Neji, his face inscrutable even by the Hyuuga standards, just nodded.

“Then what are you waiting for? Let’s do it!” Amy’s voice broke the silence.

_To be continued…_


	5. Conclusion

The Hyuuga clan’s family temple/shrine was a small, humble-looking affair, but even as Amy was approaching it (slightly aside from the Hyuuga main crowd as to not attract too much attention to it, she could sense the building’s rather impressive spiritual aura; considering that Amy was never much into aura sensing, this made the building’s aura only more impressive.

“That looks impressive,” she muttered to herself, as she watched Hiashi, his daughters and nephew walk into the temple. 

“It is,” one of the Hyuugas walking next to her agreed solemnly. “It is one of the oldest family shrines in Konoha, you know, for our clan was one of the first clans to come and settle here-“

As the Hyuuga began to, apparently, quote excerpts from “The Visitor’s Guide to the Hyuuga clan compound”, Amy began to tune him out, and listen to Hiashi’s family’s appeals to Hizashi, and possibly, his family. And yet when the final notes of this application faded and a harsh, elderly, unfamiliar voice replied, Amy was startled as much as everyone else.

* * *

“No!”

Hiashi couldn’t help but stare at his new interlocutor largely because he was expecting Hizashi, not this family member. “Father”, he almost stuttered, “what, why, how?”

“Hiashi,” the deceased Hyuuga family patriarch sighed despondently. “Out of my sons, you were the best, but also the most foolish. Even this you couldn’t figure out by yourself – your brother had to trouble himself and bring an outsider to the clan to help you! You and the rest of those idiots that my clan’s council is currently made up of couldn’t even realize it on your own! You became so preoccupied with form that you forgot about the content, and because of that our clan is now cursed! Cursed! The ignominy of it! Never since the actual founding of Konoha did our clan become cursed!”

“I’m sorry,” Hiashi could only mutter, feeling as if he was back in the school, and his father was criticizing him again for some failure. “Father, I will try to do better next time.”

If a ghost could choke, this one certainly did. “Next time? Next time? Young man, you still have this time to get over! That gaijin wu jen may just be the right person to help you do that: your brother, for all of his flaws, was always the one with the people skills! So, get this curse broken, and then we’ll talk!”

With these words the elderly ghost vanished in a burst of transparent flame, leaving Hiashi rather tongue-tied to say the least.

“So,” the same Hyuuga who’d been giving Amy the description of their clan grounds now asked her without missing a beat. “Do you have any ideas as to how to break our curse?”

Amy shook her head. She wasn’t sure what game the clan’s ghosts were playing with their living kin, but she did know that she was now straight in the middle of it, and that – after her Twilight fiasco – was just neat. 

“I’ve no idea, but we will be living in an interesting time,” she just replied, smiling slightly.

_The end?_


	6. Extra chapter: of puppets and men

The law that states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction works for magic too: there is a wax for every wane, a stance for every delivery, a supply for every demand... In this particular case meant that when Amy Madison the impromptu wu jen arrived in the elemental countries, someone, or rather something else vanished from those lands: the insanity of Orochimaru-san.

That, perhaps, needs a certain clarification: the Hebi-sannin did not stop being himself, did not stop hating his native village of Konoha, or did not stop being a missing-nin, but there was now something very different about him – he regained his coherence.

What in the name of Kami am I doing here? he wondered, with ‘here’ being the Akatsuki conference room, with the Akatsuki holding a conference at this very moment. I just want to have revenge at Sarutobi-sensei and the rest of the village, plus perhaps achieve immortality and experiment on people for the betterment of science – where does the Leader-sama’s wish of global domination come into it?

The answer was of course obvious (to Orochimaru at any rate): nowhere. And as such, what he was doing here? The answer was – he had no idea and as such he had no reason to stick around here anymore either, so he just got up.

“Orochimaru? And where are you going? We’re not finished,” the Rinnegan-wielding leader of the Akatsuki said sternly.

That decided it. The semi-divine Rinnegan aside, Orochimaru had never been fond of Pein and to hear the other shinobi speak to him as if Orochimaru was his own Kabuto was inconceivable.

“Ah!” Orochimaru replied, “my apologizes. I stood up because I’d been hit by a revelation.”

“What sort of a revelation?”

“I finally realized what this seal I invented does to Sasori-sama!” Orochimaru replied before slamming a C-shaped seal onto Sasori’s chest. “For an ordinary person it just shuts off their emotions, but for Sasori-sama, it transforms his initially wooden parts into steel!”

“It does!” Sasori agreed, looking at his new steely body. “I feel even better, stronger and more perfect than ever!” To prove his point, he took the Akatsuki conference table and tore it apart as if it was made out of toilet tissue. “See?”

“That’s pretty neat!” echoed Hidan, “what else can you do?”

“This,” Sasori replied, before hitting Uchiha Itachi in the head with one half of the table. “See? It’s fun!”

“Hey let me try!” Never let it be said that Hidan didn’t value a good bout of violence. He grabbed the other half of the table and tried to hit Itachi in the head too.

“Oh no you won’t!” Kisame, Itachi’s partner in the Akatsuki snarled, grabbing the first half of the table and blocking Hidan’s strike. “On guard!”

As Hidan and Kisame struggled, ‘fencing’ with two halves of the conference table, Orochimaru slipped away unseen from the conference room – but not quite...

* * *

“And where are you going?”

The innocent-sounding question of his partner caught Orochimaru almost flat-footed – almost. His pride and hubris, however, nullified the difference all the same. “I’m leaving the Akatsuki,” he said flatly. “Pein can lead the rest of you to the fulfillment of his dream for all I care – I have my own dreams: Sarutobi dead, Konoha in flames – and I honestly don’t care about the rest.”

“And you’re going to do it all by yourself?” Sasori sceptically asked: Orochimaru’s ego was huge, but surely not that huge?

“Of course not!” Orochimaru replied cheerfully. “I have a long, long plan ahead of me... and it includes taking over Suna by impersonating the Kazekage.”

“What? But I’m from Suna!” Sasori said instinctively.

“Yes, but you’re not the Kazekage,” Orochimaru shrugged as he finished packing, “so you have no interest for me whatsoever.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sasori said slowly, “I mean that Suna is my home village-“

“And mine’s Konoha, what’s your point?” Orochimaru replied glibly before sliding out of the doors, leaving Sasori on his own and with the dark and brooding thoughts of his own.

_End_


End file.
